


you were never her

by ambassador319



Category: The 100
Genre: Canon, Canon Compliant, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 05:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15656493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambassador319/pseuds/ambassador319
Summary: Echo asked what Clarke meant to him, once. Bellamy didn’t know what to say.It wasn’t like that,he told Echo, when he realised why she’d asked.Clarke was never you. Clarke was-she was-(5x04: what Bellamy remembers as he reunites with Clarke)





	you were never her

Bellamy’s hand fists into the back of Clarke’s singlet, and he can feel the expanse and deflate of her breath against his knuckles, and that’s all he needs. To feel her breathing; to know she’s alive. He thinks, for a fleeting moment, that’s all he’ll ever need.

Echo asked what Clarke meant to him, once. Bellamy hadn’t known what to say. _It wasn’t like that,_ he told Echo, when he realised why she’d asked. _Clarke was never you. Clarke was-_

_She was-_

Well, it helped to begin with the ways Clarke wasn’t like Echo. Clarke had never started a spark inside him like Echo did, sharp and short as a solar flare. Nor had her presence ever licked and spat at him like an open fire. Echo reminded Bellamy of the wind, in a ship where there blew none: she was flighty, fierce, wondering and wandering; she was beautiful. However, she was also his rock. For six long years, Echo was always there for Bellamy to lean on. She was solid. Present. Utterly, undeniably, real.

In the sky, that’s all that really matters. Whether you’re real or not.

And Clarke Griffin had stopped seeming real, after a while. She’d become less of a person, and more of a legend; Bellamy thought that, ironically, she had become to his Spacekru as _Wanheda_ had become to the Grounders. She was a name. A story.

Clarke Griffin became history.

The story-like unrealness that became Clarke became clear during their third year in space. Bellamy had finally goaded everyone into reading the Iliad. Somehow, it turned out Clarke Griffin lurked in every other word. Monty called her Apollo, for her abilities as a healer- Harper, Odysseus, for her strategy in battle. Murphy coined “blonde Achilles”, because “we’ve got to honour her blaze of glory going out somehow, right?” The Iliad _clearly_  stated Achilles was fair-haired anyway, but Bellamy let Murphy figure that out for himself.

No one else figured Clarke Griffin was Hector of Troy. It was glaringly obvious; the two shared one final, fatal sacrifice to save their people from a deathwave. The only difference was, Hector failed. Troy fell. However, Bellamy and his Skypeople were Clarke’s Trojans. And, because of her sacrifice, their Arkadian Ring never fell.

Ever.

(Ask Raven: their last year in space, she tried to fell it every damn way under the sun).

But, yeah. As were the ancient Archaeans, Clarke Griffin was remembered at the cost of her own mortality. She was dead. She was but a memory, remembered by legend and sacrifice and old, ancient awe, the kind you carve into monuments.

And Echo wasn’t.

Bellamy Blake does not love Clarke Griffin’s memory the way he loves Echo.

Echo had closed her eyes when he told her that. He saw an unmistakable relief ripple over her features, smoothing them out. She leant back against the Ring’s interior wall, and she sighed, and it was almost ridiculous how light his chest felt, then. Like a great weight had slipped off of him. Like he was full up of air.

Eventually she asked, _So you felt about her as you do Raven?_

Bellamy had glanced over at the mechanic in question, chuckled when she’d flipped Echo the finger and answered for him,  _Blake loves no one like me! I’m awesome!_

 _No,_ Bellamy told Echo. Clarke wasn’t Raven. _Clarke wasn’t Raven._

Echo had counted Spacekru on her fingers- _Monty, Harper, Murphy, Emori-_

Bellamy had simply shaken his head. _No._

_Who, then?_

_Clarke was Clarke._

_Oh, come on, give the girl something to work with,_ Raven prodded, from a station console across the room. Bellamy opened his mouth, but nothing would come out. He closed it again. She rolled her eyes. _Fine, I’ll start. Clarke was like gravity._

 _Gravity?_ Echo echoed.  
  
_The force that keeps things on the ground,_ Emori recited from the corner. Raven let rip a hearty whoop, pumping her fist for good measure, and Bellamy swore he saw Emori smile a little as she buried herself back in her textbook.

 _Remind me to give her a spacewalk,_ Raven said, still grinning. _Yeah, so, Clarke kept us grounded. Picture her as a gravitational constant, right? We were point masses, and she was inversely proportional to the square of distance between our centres. She acted along the theoretical intersecting line between us, as a force, and-_

 _Stop,_ Echo said. _Please. This is worse than your lectures on sustainable mechanical engineering._

The mechanic had given her an offended look, and the two of them might have erupted into an intense discussion about the necessity of science right then and there, had Bellamy not interrupted with the translation, _She_ _was the force that stopped us all from breaking apart._

There was a silence. The concept of Clarke Griffin laid itself thick within it, heavy, unprecedentedly choking, and Bellamy continued because he had to because otherwise his unborn words might have physically strangled him. _She kept us centered,_ he said. _Balanced. The world might have been going to hell, but when I was with her-_

Again, his voice fumbled on air. Echo’s eyes bore into him, but he looked to Raven. Raven, who wasn’t looking at him, Raven, who was looking out a window at the Earth, Raven, whose shoulder he’d stood at and sworn an oath of survival over the death of the one girl they both never thought they’d have to say goodbye to-

and Bellamy found his words.

 _She was the promise that we’d be okay,_ he said. _When we were with Clarke Griffin, the sky could be falling in, but she would hold it up for us. That’s who she was._

There was a shaky sort of smile on Raven’s face. She turned back to the station console, but the sight of her smile had already relaxed the clench of Clarke in the air. Bellamy exhaled. The Clarke in Raven’s head and the one in his didn’t always match up, but he’d managed to fit them together this time. If Clarke Griffin was anything, she was a saviour. It was undeniable.

Quietly, Echo asked, _And was that everything she was to you?_ The question was for him alone. Her eyes were still, inconceivably, wary.

 _Clarke was important to me,_ Bellamy answered simply. _She is. She always will be._

The words were true and Bellamy wouldn’t have taken a single one back but Echo looked at him and through him then, the way her _gona Azgeda_ self used to look for a potential enemy, and he almost laughed because there was _nothing to fight._ He took her hands, and he kissed her, and it was nothing like Clarke Griffin had ever felt like to him.

 _I love **you,**_ he said.

Clarke Griffin is in Bellamy Blake’s bones, but Echo is in his heart.

(Echo is his home.)

Now, Clarke breathes against his fingers. She’s alive. She’s here. Clarke Griffin is breathing and, for the first time, that’s all Bellamy wants of her. He wants no blood- no command- no reasoning. He wants no leadership. He wants nothing of her as such of which he wants from Echo.

Bellamy wants her to breathe. That’s all.

His thoughts draw back from him just as Clarke does. _And now you’re home?_ She asks. Her eyes are locked on his. The question is a small, frail creature, trembling like something is trying to break out of it, and Bellamy Blake hides his hesitation with a nod.

He is where he is supposed to be.

But he’s not home yet.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> fuck off blorkes lol


End file.
